


About the Blood in Your Mouth

by theskywasblue



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just business</p>
            </blockquote>





	About the Blood in Your Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> So it's my personal _Inception_ -versary. Maybe not to the exact day - but I'm pretty close. As such, I wrote a fic that didn't end up as I intended _at all_. I'm sad to say this happens a lot.

The pressure on the back of his skull vanishes abruptly, and Eames forces himself to lift his head up out of the icy water, eyes burning, nose clogged. He hacks water and phlegm out of his throat, shakes his hair out of his eyes, and squints at Davis, who is smiling.

"You know, if you would just tell me where he is, all this could stop - and I wouldn't have to get any more water on my nice suit."

It's not a nice suit – it's a shitty suit. Badly tailored, anyway. For all Eames knows, Davis paid an exorbitant amount of money for it. He's an idiot like that.

"Too bad for you, mate," Eames rasps at last, his chest still tight from lack of oxygen, ribs aching as they fight to expand more than they should. "I don't _bloody know_."

The best (or worst) part is that Eames is actually telling the truth. The last time he saw Arthur, two days ago, he was post-coital in Eames' rented flat in Shanghai. Eames has to admit that something had seemed slightly off in the line of Arthur's shoulders, the cast of his smile. He had curled against Eames' side, chin tucked into Eames' shoulder, breathing softly on the side of his neck and had traced the patterns of the tattoos across Eames' chest with his fingers until Eames had fallen asleep.

And when he'd awakened, Arthur had been gone, along with Eames' best bug-out bag from the safe in the bedroom closet.

It was a bit of a low blow, but nothing Eames himself wouldn't have done if the fire was hot enough.

But the fire was never hot under Arthur's fine arse. And if it was, he never broke a sweat over it. Made Eames wonder just what kind of trouble he had gotten himself in to.

Davis leans into Eames' face, grabs a handful of his hair and drawls, "Too bad I don't fucking believe you," then puts Eames' head into the water again.

***

Eventually, they reach an impasse. It happens about the time that Eames loses the battle with his gag reflex and vomits into the water trough. He can tell it irks Davis considerably when he's forced to accept that Eames isn't, for once, lying through his teeth.

They don't kill him, which is a nice surprise. Probably, they see him as their last, best hope to get to Arthur. If he's dead, there's no reason at all for Arthur to ever surface again. At least, none that Davis can probably fathom; he's not very creative. The truth is that Eames is hardly any sort of reason for Arthur to do anything. But Davis need not know that little detail.

Eames goes back to his rented flat, puts a butterfly bandage on the gash above his left eyebrow, applies some Arnica cream to his new collection of bruises, and has a few glasses of scotch before bed.

He wakes in the dark to the sharp electric ring of his mobile phone, and staggers through the dark to find it, abandoned in the living room next to his empty glass. At the sight of the name flashing on the caller ID, his heart does things better left to professional gymnasts.

"Don't," he croaks, instead of 'hello', phone pressed tight to his ear as though that might hold Arthur in place as Eames walks to the nearest window, peers through the venetians out towards the crowded street. All he sees are lights and phantom faces, bustling; so much colour it feels artificial, like a dream. He sidesteps, puts his back to the wall, and checks the totem in his pocket. He is not, in fact, dreaming.

"Don't tell me where you are," he instructs Arthur. "Don't tell me what you did or who you're in with. Just..."

 _Run_ would be the most logical instruction; but the sudden, cold certainty that he won't see Arthur again if he dares to utter the word isn't exactly unfounded.

The silence on the other end of the phone lasts a very long time before Arthur says, “Eames.”

Eames’ tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

The call ends. Eames pulls the SIM card out of the phone, snaps it in half, and flushes it down the toilet. He imagines Arthur does the same.

***

Eames leaves Shanghai and goes to London, because he knows that Davis intends to follow him, and he’d really rather have home-field advantage, as it were. That and also because he’s grown tired of Shanghai’s sticky heat, its fish-market crowds. Back on familiar streets, November proves cold and dreary, and Eames spends a lot of time in small pubs; because he can get drunk on the cheap, the food is awful but filling, there’s the occasional poker game with low stakes and easy winnings, and a Yank like Davis sticks out like a sore thumb, which never ceases to be amusing.

It’s his third night when someone pauses flipping between one football match and the next long enough for Eames to catch the headline: _Billionare Tycoon Caught in Child Pornography Scandal_.

When Eames recognizes the face on the television screen, he catches Davis’ eye in the mirror behind the bar and raises his glass in a toast.

***

“Honestly, darling – I don’t know how you carry on with this _legitimate business_ nonsense. It’s dreadfully boring.”

Arthur snatches the manila folder from Eames’ hand and puts it back on the hotel’s bedside table. “It’s good money.”

“So is what we were doing before. I can’t imagine how you go from a bloody _inception_ to prowling through a woman’s mind looking for off-shore bank accounts and secret lovers so that her husband can get a bigger divorce settlement. And anyway – you were never in it for the money.”

“I tend to get shot at less,” Arthur points out, not denying Eames’ previous statement. Then he adds, “a little less.”

Eames leans over and kisses Arthur’s neck. “Come now, Arthur. I’ve seen the way your face lights up during a good gunfight.”

There’s a tiny, and slightly guilty smirk at the corner of Arthur’s mouth. “I was never in it for the gun fights.”

“Well I was.”

Arthur laughs, “You were not!” and kicks him underneath the blankets.

They struggle, trading playful blows with knees and elbows, until Arthur catches Eames, accidentally, in the mouth. It’s not a hard blow by any means, but teeth are sharp, and Eames’ split his lip open like a hot spoon through cold custard.

“Shit – Eames – Shit!” Arthur presses his hand to Eames’ mouth and only manages to smear the blood all across his chin and jaw until Eames catches his hand to stop him.

“It’s alright darling,” he licks his lip, and finally feels the sting of the wound, distant and hot. “Just a little blood.”

Arthur cradles Eames’ face in his hands, touches his forehead to Eames’ and kisses his bloody mouth. “I’m sorry, Eames.”

***

“It’s just business, you know.”

Davis picks at his greasy plate of chips. He has a gun under his ridiculous sport jacket and a good deal of money in his wallet – though it’s about half as much as he had when he sat down next to Eames. Eames has been skimming from him every night for a week and putting the money in various donation pots on street corners around the city. Christmas is coming, and the depth of Davis’ pockets – along with his inability to remember how much he has spent on drinks while in Eames’ company – has paid for gifts for dozens of less fortunate children already.

"A smart man doesn't make it personal. He collects his pay and goes home at the end of the day. Doesn't matter what he thinks about whoever’s putting then money into his pocket."

On the one hand, it's a sound philosophy. On the other, Davis is an utter wanker.

"It's nice to see you've been served so well by your unilateral approach to humanity."

"Oh come on, Eames," Davis laughs, draining his glass and motioning for a top-up. "Where were you before you were here? MI5? GCH?"

"I'm afraid all that's classified." Eames puts on a good, tight smile, but spins his totem across his knuckles, comforted by its familiar weight.

"Well the point is," the alcohol is starting to slosh behind Davis' eyes, which is good. Soon he'd be loose-limbed and mentally pliable, and Eames will be able to slide a knife in between his ribs. Not that he's going to, but it's nice to know the option will be there. "We were on the _other side_. We were soldiers, killers and spies – not nicely-dressed little Jewish boys with college educations and scrap books full of building plans. We were the grunts and the guinea pigs, not the _consultants_."

"Hmm," Eames responds.

Davis turns his attention with casual disinterest to the intricacies of the football match. "Well anyway," he says, "it's nothing against you. Just business."

Eames doesn't really understand why this seems so important, until later when a group of men in suits much nicer than Davis' crowd him off a deserted side street and into the back of a lorry.

***

Eames is no idiot. He knows when he's dreaming.

The problem is that Arthur's lips feel the same whether in reality or a dream; his skin tastes the same. Eames _wants_ it to be real.

His only saving grace is that he doesn't actually know where Arthur is – so the cityscape outside their hotel window is Milan; the stationary on the desk is from a B&B outside Copenhagen; and when they order room service, the uniform the bellhop wears is the same as the ones from their hotel in New York last Christmas.

They don't get what they want from him. Eames wakes up in the middle of the afternoon with a double-shot hangover – one part alcohol, one part low-market Somnicin – packs a bag and heads for warmer climates, purposely avoiding places he knows of offhand where Arthur has contacts.

Then again, Arthur has contacts everywhere; so his efforts are likely to prove somewhat fruitless.

He ends up in Sydney – although he’s never been terribly found of the land down-under – but it has the opera, and football, so it can't be all bad. It's at least sunny and warm, which is a definite improvement over the sodden chill of England.

Davis doesn't follow him; his usefulness has run out.

***

"New developments today in the shocking case of Charles M. Sauter, founder of The Sauter Defence Company, implicated earlier this month in what the FBI is calling a ‘prolific’ child pornography ring...”

Eames shuts the television off, burrows deeper under the soft hotel blankets in the dark. The room is dry and cold with the hum of the air conditioner, which has been lulling Eames to sleep the last few nights, when he runs out of television to watch.

He’s just on the edge of sleep when someone knocks on the hotel room door. He figures it’s not really for him – likely those young Swedish tourists from down the hall who keep getting sloshed and wandering off without their room keys – but when he ignores it, it only gets louder.

When he opens the door, ignoring his own state of undress – anyone bloody stupid enough to knock on the door in the middle of the night can just _deal with it_ ; and if it’s Davis, well Eames’ refusal to put on pants will likely make it more difficult to stage another impromptu kidnapping – and sees Arthur standing there, he immediately turns around and walks away in search of his totem. It’s in the pocket of his trousers, the right weight, shape, colour, the same casual misspelling. Eames turns back to the door.

“What the bloody hell?”

Arthur shuts the door, turns on a light. He looks apologetic. And tanned. Eames is smothered by the desire to kiss the hollow of his throat and tangle his fingers in the uncut hair that’s curling at the nape of his neck.

Arthur has a suitcase in one hand and Eames’ bug-out bag in the other. He’s wearing smart trousers and a pinstripe shirt with the sleeves rolled up, no suit jacket, no tie or tidy little vest.

“Kind of hard,” Arthur says, “to pay hit men, PI’s and an extraction team when your assets have been frozen.”

Eames bites his lip, tosses his totem onto the bedside table. His emotions are oscillating so wildly between anger and relief that he’s beginning to feel quite seasick.

“Just business,” he says at last, when the whole thing more or less settles in the back of his mind. “That’s why Davis never followed me. And here I almost thought I’d been quick enough to shake him off.”

Arthur tucks his suitcase into the closet, the but-out bag on top of it. “Actually I called in a favour – when I found out he was following you, I had Dee shoot him. Just in the leg. Sorry.”

Eames takes three steps across the room, fists his hands in the front of Arthur’s shirt, and holds so tight he thinks a few stitches pop. He kisses Arthur until his lips sting and says, “Don’t be.”

-End-


End file.
